About Dr de Alwis

Dr Nadine de Alwis is an Australian trained and fully qualified Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon.

Born in Sri Lanka, Dr Nadine de Alwis migrated to Australia with her family at the age of four. She grew up in Melbourne and completed a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery at The University of Melbourne, graduating in the top 15% of her class.

In 2006 Dr Nadine de Alwis started internship and early surgical training at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and completed one year of General Surgery  training. In 2011 she was accepted into Ear, Nose and Throat surgical training and over the next 6 years she worked at prestigious Victorian metropolitan hospitals.

Dr Nadine de Alwis was awarded fellowship of The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (FRACS) in 2017 and became a member of The Australian Society of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery (ASOHNs). 

Following this, she commenced an ENT consultant position in Cairns, QLD and worked in both the private and public sector. There she gained a vast generalist adult and paediatric ENT experience, in particular otological issues affecting the indigenous and rural communities.

In 2019 Dr Nadine de Alwis moved to Sydney to complete fellowship training in Neurotology at St Vincent’s Private and Public hospital in Darlinghurst. Dr de Alwis performed an array of complex otological procedures such as mastoidectomy for cholesteatoma, stapedectomy for otosclerosis, cochlear implants, bone conduction hearing implants and acoustic neuroma (vestibular schwannoma) surgery. 

Upon return to Melbourne in 2020 Dr de Alwis gained further experience in lateral skull base and vestibular schwannoma surgery at Austin Health and Monash Health. She was mentored closely by Associate Prof Vincent Cousins and took over his role as neurotologist at Alfred Health upon his retirement in June 2023. Dr de Alwis has been a practising neurotologist/lateral skull base surgeon at Alfred Health since 2020 - she holds regular skull base multidisciplinary meetings to discuss management of such cases and other disorders of the temporal bone. 

She is one of very few Victorian ENT surgeons that has significant experience in endoscopic ear surgery and performs the majority of myringoplasty (ear drum repair) and cholesteatoma surgery entirely endoscopically.

Dr de Alwis takes management of sudden sensorineural hearing loss seriously and considers this condition to be urgent- She has the facilities to perform grommets and intratympanic steroid injections under local anaesthetic (awake in rooms procedure) and has a strong relationship with the hyperbaric unit at Alfred Health. 

Dr de Alwis believes in patient choice and practices patient centred care. For this reason she offers all available brands of hearing implants to her patients. She is the first surgeon in Victoria to implant Advanced Bionics (AB) cochlear implants and has performed the most of this particular brand in Australia. AB implants are the most widely used cochlear implants in the world. She also offers Cochlear, Medel and Oticon hearing implant devices to her patients and is happy to discuss all options.

Education plays an integral role in Dr de Alwis’ life. She works at 3 public hospitals and spends a considerable amount of time teaching the ENT registrars and junior staff. She previously ran the temporal bone dissection lab at Monash Health and has edited several book chapters on ENT emergency surgery.